painting what i know

I've decided to begin painting what I know....

I've always painted what i like, beautiful images that take me to other places.... but have realized that I would like to be a fine artist.... even before commercial art, fashion illustration, etc. I'd like my art to be taken seriously , stand the test of time.

So I'm going to paint what I know, by drawing out my memories and stories onto canvas... tell more about my life. Make portraits about what I've experienced, but as i make them, think about what I hope for.

So far, this portrait of my family and this self portrait, I'm working on, are showing me a side of my talent i haven't seen before, and so.....

i feeL inspired.

Record machine and Self-portraits

SO... it's been a good couple weeks.... i got myself a record player from the 60s, so i can listen to some warm tunes while i work... so excited to collect records.... it's be something i've always wanted to do.

Also, I have started my first self -portrait... a purple rendition of myself... I'm stoked to see it through.

Dear OLympics,

Funny, I never thought about The Olympics much until it became all the rage, news, hype, as 'they' arrived in the city I am currently living in.

Not only was my perspective especially unique , because I worked in the downtown hub for the people of the world to use as their playground/place to get fucked up, but because of such perspective - I realized a lot (first hand) about how messed up our world really is.

For two weeks straight - 3 fuLL weekends - I worked Thursday , Fri, Sat, Sunday in the heart of the party, at Subeez Cafe, on the corner of Homer and Smithe. A huge castle-like bar in downtown Vancouver, that can seat probably 200 people.

I opened the restaurant each day at 9am. And observed people busting in at 9am ,day in and day out, demanding double Caesars they chased with coffee, and wearing the same clothes they'd been in the day before.

I know the Olympics is a big deal for Canada and Vancouver, because the world is noticing us, giving Vancouver a reason to party, etc ... but for me, None of it felt Right.

The amount of money flooding in through Subeez' doors - spent all on alcohol , in the daytime, day after day- in parallel to the money flooding into 'The Olympic' ceremonies, Canada Apparel , stupid souvenirs etc, I found incredibly lavish, exuberant and seriously disturbing.

THis Money$ could be helping people!!! Instead the wealthy of the world are competing against each other, flapping about their 'colours' and 'signs' - to prove WHat?? That we are better at sport than you? We can out party you?? We can chug a pitcher of beer quicker than you?? We can host a better OLympics than you??

A poor seat at the opening ceremonies went for around $800 - you received a cardboard drum, a weird paper cloak, and some other crap.... I would find these drums scattered around the bar in the morning - people throwing them out , garbage, garbage.

Did anyone ever think of making the Olympics a minimalist event? Were it was only about the sport, the coming together, and putting all that money towards a good cause??? Banning together like that to help the world!?? Rather than get shit faced, while celebrating athletic excellence, which , to me, is completely hypocritical anyways!!

My blood boils as I write this. I don't know much about much, but from where I was standing - in the middle of ALL of it - Everything felt wrong and off balance... As I witnessed people from around the world gorging on their own egos, and on so called 'National Pride', with booze and cheap gimmicks.

We should have a flag for The World - and be coming together like that to help each other out! Not compete against each other and litter The Earth with puke - beer cans- and cardboard drums!!

Yes Canada landed 'On top' of the Olympics , taking the most gold ever won, beating The Americans over and over, etc. etc,. but I'm curious to see how Sweet Healthy Vancouver handles this Hangover, and I'm curious to see how The World can survive much more of this idiotic behaviour.

Sincerely,

Robyn Waffle,
aka: disturbed by what I just witnessed.

homesickness

It's sunny as hell out, spring is near... I'm feeling crazy homesick today - missing my peeps big time. It definitely feels like the novelty of 'being away' is wearing off... Now that I'm over all the shit I wanted to get over, am mended , and happy again. I really miss the people/stuff I didn't want to move on from. I want to be back in it, chillin in my East.

sprinkly face

happy/sad

I've realized it is quite hard to create in the way I'm used to creating....

Having spent the past few years feeling quite down, unhappy, lost,..
I've filled my time with paintings reflecting these emotions....
Full of feeling, dreaming, harbouring deep undertones of despair...
"Sad but beautifuL", someone once said.
I fell into my paintings...
I let 'rybon' wash over me,. I let 'Her' uplift me into a better place,..
In hard times, my art was my cure.

Now I am in Vancouver,
a place where I don't know many people,
but a place where I feel calm and at peace.
There's a beautiful little stupid kitten chasing her tale on my floor, and a beautiful intelligent man I live with, who cherishes me,.. both of them bring me joy and laughter everyday... they fill me with a secure happiness I haven't felt in a long time.

But.... I find it incredibly hard to paint in the way I'm used to paining.
So....... I think I have to create in light of how I'm feeling - lighthearted, happy, funny, etc.

I am changing course. ... It'll be hard to do... but painting these huge heartfelt images, just doesn't suit my mood.

I can feel it gettin there....

something is happening... at least I hope it is.
I am seriously lacking inspiration at the moment, but perhaps am on the brink of something huge, at least i hope i am.

i will say it again... I want to be good. I want to mean something...
I'm obsessed with good images, but they need to mean more than 'cooL' to look at.

I am yearning for the day I get there... i'll get there , and then i'll yearn for something else.

In one of those moods: the spellbound kind

I woke up this morning to BLasting sunlight and the Kitten asleep on my neck.
Spent time, quiet, with Bart, in bed.
We mused about the night before, spending time with his friends at Karaoke ...

We then arose, got some coffee, and grabbed the basketball, for a game in the park on our street.
The sun felt warmer than I've felt in months, assuring us that Spring is almost here.

Sweet breath. A sigh.
We walk slowly... enjoying the air and the bright day,.
Funny how yesterday I felt so flat... angry... sad etc. Then today, utterly Spellbound by this little life I get to lead...
Feeling so much love, being in Love for the first time in years, ... Living in a dream.

I painted my anger out yesterday... threw Black pain on a White surface.
Splashed the ink all over a large canvas, then carved 'What's the point?' in it, over and over again.
WHATS THE POINT > was my mood yesterday . . .
and then today, I sigh in relief , while sitting in hand with Love, in a sunny park, while looking at SNowy mountain peeks, ... the air washing those angry words from my mind.... the beautifuL serene scene reminding me that THIS is the Point.

Me here, doing nothing, while doing something, then typing it aLL out right now, painting it out yesterday,,, may seem pointless in a fleeting moment, but ever lasting and important when the sun comes out, and you Breathe it all in ,.
as It aLL is,. the essence of existing, ..
with no explanation.

And I did...

I said i should paint it out of me....
... and then I did.

:>

in one of those moods: the indifferent kind

Im freezing inside, but was overheating outside.
Im in a mood, i tend to get into.... dont know how many other people get like this.... but its the kind that sucks.
Indifferent. Uncaring. Not happy. But not sad either. Just flat as fuck, and kind of angry.
Like 'What is the point to all this?'
When I'm in a mood like this, I suppose all i'm good for is painting.... perhaps I should try and paint it out of me.

The Vanity

ANd so, the convos about Art, what it is and why I do it , have been on the tongue of my confidant and I this week...

The vanity, the self-obsession, but also the need to express in order to survive. Its interesting because people always ask me if these women I paint are me... I answer that they must be, weren't intended to be, but I'm painting MY insides, so clearly my women will resemble me.

Sometimes, no doubt I intend them to be me, considering I'm painting about something that happened or is happening to me. I suppose these characters are versions of ideaL beauty,, seen by me... but I also suppose, based on what I've been told, that I am a version of 'ideaL beauty' as well. Something i've taken a long time to grasp, and still have trouble understanding....

Considering in my first couple decades I was awkward, acne covered and in public school with the the last name Waffle.... I had a hard time, and definitely wasn't considered beautifuL until the later years when I started wearing makeup. I still walk around and have no idea that I am 'beautiful' in the way people exclaim I am on the regular basis././ It's weird. I don't actually hear them. I don't even like the attention really.

But! Art is also about attention, and I believe I'm in it for a different kind of attention. The good kind, based on accomplishment and thinking. I most definitely know I want to be taken seriously, and often if your pretty , people dont take you seriously. Especially in a predominately Male industry.

It's interesting, to me,.. because I also firmly believe I am sincerely holding back. Have never really let myself express myself the way I feel I should be. But I think my guts will only get stronger as I get older.... more confident.... and perhaps less pretty ;)

who knows... just some thought.s

EMiLy IsLand

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The Kitten & Crows

This kitten purrs in my lap. Asleep on her back ,feet in the air.
She's been a hellion this morning… tearing around like a mad woman.
I like her better like this, quiet and cuddly. Warm and sweet.
I guess all wild creatures need to calm down at times. and sleep.

Im in my living room. My studio living room. I have my recent paintings all around me. Some big, some medium, some small. Colourful as heLL. So colourful they kind of make me sick. The most intense one, looks like my brain's exploded all over it. It's definitely the exact colours of my brain… maybe i should call it, 'my brain'. These paintings make me miss the canvases I first did, the ones i did in black and white.

There is no music on, silence… until i hear a crew of crows out my window. There are so many crows in Vancouver. i like it.
And so, I want to be good,… like the kind of good that breaks through shit… i want to set rules for myself… write a manifesto…. design a movement. Paint things people have never seen…. commentate on the age we live in… how strange it is…. how we watch each other.,… how we know things need to change, even more drastically than before…

I guess it's hard to be happy go lucky - la dee dA - right now… i suppose some people do it… i can sometimes…. but realistically , im quite serious. I like real deep shit: the kind that resinates & shakes the brain. I want to be able to make stuff that does that ~ not only shakes my brain, but other peoples. People of all ages.

The Kitten has moved…
she watches my fingers type,
she bats at them with her paw.

The Crows have moved on,
I now hear Sea Gulls.

MY NEW inspiration BLOG - Check it.

http://www.robynwaffle.tumblr.com

Phantasmagoria

(Written on March 7th 2008, at Java House,
during an incredible snow storm, in Toronto)

Yesterday.
I changed my way.

I woke up and said “enough is enough” and looked down at my arm, as I lay in Charlie’s bed.

We talked, I cried, worried he wouldn’t find me. . . Char held me, kissed my hair and whispered, “I love you so much.”

We’d experienced an inspiring evening the night before this morn. . . went to the Drake to watch a beautiful Parisian DJ perform, (A man who loves Charlie, of course). . . and so much happened. . .

I had been in a dark place at this time, feeling strange, introverted, and hadn't really emerged from Charlie's Gallery since the sLaw* art event we had put on in February. Charlie convinced me to to go out with her that evening, get out into the world again.

I had said to her, as we were closing the gallery, before the night began, that I desperately wanted to meet someone inspiring at the Drake, a beauty who would blow my mind, make me feel alive. As I wished for this, I did a little dance in the middle of Charlie's Galley, in the middle of my recent series of paintings…

Char repeated what I said, and exclaimed, “You know everything we repeat in here comes true Rob! We are in the Genie’s Bottle!” She smiled her fairy smile, and I felt better for just a second, but still slow and heavy in my despair.

In such a trance, as Char went outside, I went to turn off the lights, and somehow knocked my 6foot tall painting named ‘Tough Love’, so she only dangled from one nail in one corner on the wall, swinging like a giant pendulum, to the tune of my mind and soul, (I remember this swing so vividly).

Then as I moved to save Her from falling, I let go of an 8foot tall mirror standing in front of the light switch… It blew over, almost right on top of me, smashing into a million lightening bolts. Char’s sweet face in the window, screaming ‘Noooooooo!’

Wow.

I just stood there. Stunned. Shaken by this incredible sequence. Charlie came in, quiet, looking at me with her doe eyes, “that was crazy.” “I know,” I replied, “Tonight’s going to be a crazy night”.

We spent the next hour, or so, carefully collecting each piece into a cardboard box. I told her how broken mirror is so rare, and should be cherished. She told me that this was the Universe telling me to 'Wake the Fuck up'. The pretty world was shaking me – desperately trying to remove a dark shadow from my brow.

So we skipped to the Drake. Then stretched across the lobby couch feeling oh so high. As we lounged there, a strange man came and sat down next to me. A moment later I realized he wasn’t so strange, very familiar in fact. Ian Huff, but all grown up. A friend I had in high school and hadn’t seen since. He smiled and said, ‘Wow I thought that was you! You cut all your hair off!’ I smiled and Char rushed to show him our full-page article in the Toronto Star. He exclaimed, super impressed, as most were, by our recent accomplishment.

As we were entirely vibrating and happy, we moved downstairs, to the dance floor. “finagling” our way into the crowd. It was a day of new words – we had taught Teresa the word – Finagle – so she was using it with excitement, appropriately and out of context. Finagle had been brought to my attention by being printed in my horoscope for that week, something I read religiously:

‘It’s time you acknowledged that you are a miraculous work of Art, a masterpiece unlike any other ever created. I’m not pandering your egotism by telling you that. When I say, “Be yourself,” I don’t mean the self that wants to win every game and use up every resource and stand alone at the end of history on top of a Mt. Everest sized pile of pretty garbage. When I say, “Be Yourself”, I mean the self that says Thank You to the wild Irises and the windy rain, and the people who grow your food. I mean the self who’s joyfully struggling to geminate the seeds of love and beauty that are packed inside every moment. I mean the spiritual freedom fighter who’s scrambling and finagling and conspiring to shower all of your fellow messiah with your best blessings.’

And so, I had read this article out loud to Teresa earlier that evening, in explanation of “finagling’s” meaning… seemingly these words assisted in orchestrating the undeniable dreamy reality of that evening, when I found a mirror in a bright new woman, who re-introduced me to my ‘work-of-art’ self.

This woman pulled me into her lavish world that night, I was already so awake, and then I lay my eye on her, across the room, dancing in a white silk dress. As the strobe light pulsed, she got closer and closer, until she was so close I could feel her silk leap through my fingers, and her breath thrill my neck as she spoke. I whispered something, then she smiled her name at me,

‘Hannah’

She whirled around me like petals, in the wind around a stigma. I the stigma so stimulated and curious, I watched her in awe.

She asked me over and over to promise I would get to know her.
She asked me if she could be my new Muse.

I promised her such things, and told her how desperately I had needed to see such admiration in a stranger’s eyes. I told her how she was my dream for that evening, my dream come true, and so I could never forget her.

To end the night I followed Char, and Hannah followed me, into a Drake Hotel room. Drums mingling in the air, people standing yet barely there. Char teased her Parisian admirer, driving him wild as she let him kiss her hair and neck, yet nowhere else.

It was then that Hannah told me about her boyfriend who didn’t treat her well. I told her to never stand for such a thing. I talked to her and her friend, as they sat on a bed, wide eyed, listening intently to one of my many stories. I felt like a rock star, like I could have glanced to my right and seen Lennon on his guitar.

The moment seemed to last forever, course it did, as the clock hit eight. Then I nudged Char in exhaustion motioning for us to leave, but she took no notice of me, entranced by her DJ. Hannah took an emerald flyer, for my current art show, wrote down her number, and said, while writing beautifully across my card, “You. Are one word,
Igniting”.

I smiled. Then she said, “No wait! One more word…” Clutching my arm, she turned my wrist open and wrote, just one more word:

“Phantasmagoria”.

Then she signed underneath, "<3 Hannah '08"

* * * *

I woke up next to Char, as I looked at my arm remembering Hannah, and that magical night we had shared. “Last night was beautiful,” I said. “I know,” Char replied, “You found your beauty you desperately wanted.” I looked at my arm again, her beautiful hand writing across it in blue pen.

It felt like days went by as we lay there in bed, sun beaming in on us as we marveled in our love for each other, thanking one-another for finding the other. “You’re my backbone babe,” Char whispered, “You here, makes me okay.”

And so this is how we began our Friday…

I carefully washed, protecting ‘Hannah’ on my arm, and thought about how much I wanted her scripture on me for life… Char brushed her teeth, as I showered.

‘Phantasmagoria’, I said over in my head.
I wonder what it means . . .

‘Phan . tas . ma . goria ‘.

“Look it up at the gallery,” Char said,

I smile large, and agree with her.
“If this word means what I hope it means, I swear I’ll tattoo it on my arm.” I promise.

Another snowy day, Char and I finagled our way down Harbord to open our Charlie's Gallery. Speaking deeply about our hopes and dreams.

* * *

We get to the gallery, and I immediately look up the word...
I read it out loud to Char:

Phan·tas·ma·go·ri·a

1.a. A fantastic sequence of haphazardly associative imagery, as seen in dreams or fever.

b. A constantly changing scene composed of numerous elements.

2. Fantastic imagery as represented in art.

We both gasp... wow...
I also find that it is the title of a rare book of poems by Lewis Carroll , where he rhymes about the etiquette one must use to interact with beings from other realms.

This was incredibly exciting for me to find, considering the night before began when I smashed an 8foot taLL looking glass all over myself... a huge mirror, I also believe is the doorway into other realms.

Char and I look at each other, in shock....
'Phantasmagoria truly embodies who you are,' Char says,
'Man, this is amazing,' I reply, as I gaze in wonder at my arm... 'I have to have this here forever'.

Without a second thought, I call a tattoo shop, and ask if they can tattoo right over top of the pen ink that is on my arm... They tell me it's not a usual thing, but it can be done.
So I make an appointment for around 4pm and then make my way through the snow storm with my good friend Lisa. I deliver my arm to the tattoo shop counter; they all laugh at my request.
But once it was completed, everyone exclaimed about how interesting it was.

My first and only tattoo... made so naturally.
It truly reflects who I am, and symbolizes a very important time of my life...

A night and day to remember.
A word with so much power.

Thanks Hannah. I really needed that :)